THE DEVIL CAME TO
ST. LOUISAn Excerpt from the Summer 2006 Book
by Troy Taylor

The True
Story of the 1949 Exorcism Case

In 1949, the Devil came to St. Louis....

Or at least, if you believe the stories
that have been told for the last fifty-odd years, a reasonable
facsimile of him did.

This is the story that has been told for
three generations and it is the story that has inspired books,
films and documentaries. It is, without question, the greatest
unsolved mystery of St. Louis. And, let's face it, a story that
has become a confusing and convoluted mess over the years. There
are so many theories, legends, tales and counter-stories that
have been thrown into the mix that it's become very hard to
separate fact from fantasy. So, let's see if we can get to the
bottom of what happened in 1949, despite all of the unanswered
questions that have been left behind.

What really happened in Maryland that
would drive a family halfway across the country to look for
answers? And what happened at the old Alexian Brothers hospital
in St. Louis that still has former staff members whispering
about it in fear today? And most of all, was this boy really
possessed by demon?

The case began not in St. Louis, but in
either the small Washington, D.C. suburb of Cottage City,
Maryland or Mount Rainer. There seems to be some debate about
this because there have been a couple of different houses that
have been identified as the home in question. As most readers
already know, what has come to be known as the "St. Louis
Exorcism Case" would go on to inspire William Peter Blatty's
1971 best-selling book and the movie based on it, The
Exorcist. In the novel, a young girl is possessed by a demon
and is subjected to an exorcism by Catholic priests. In the true
story though, the subject of the alleged possession was not a
girl but a boy who has been identified in various accounts as
"Roland" or "Robbie Doe". Robbie (as we will call him here) was
born in 1935 and grew up in this area. He was the only child of
a dysfunctional family and had a troubled childhood.

In January 1949, the family of 13-year-old
"Robbie Doe" began to be disturbed by scratching sounds that
came from inside of the walls and ceilings of the house.
Believing that the house was infested with mice, the parents
called an exterminator but he could find no sign of rodents. To
make matters worse, his efforts seemed to add to the problem.
Noises that sounded like someone walking in the hallway could be
heard and dishes and objects were often found to be moved
without explanation.

And while the noises were disturbing, they
weren't nearly as frightening as when Robbie began to be
attacked. His bed shook so hard that he couldn't sleep at night.
His blankets and sheets were torn from the bed. When he tried to
hold onto them, he was reportedly pulled off the bed and onto
the floor with the sheets still gripped in his hands.

Those who have come to believe the boy was
genuinely possessed feel that he may have been invaded by an
invisible entity after experimenting with a Ouija board. He had
been taught to use the device by his "Aunt Tillie", a relative
who took an active interest in Spiritualism and the occult.
Tillie had passed away a short time before the events began and
it has even been suggested that it was her spirit who began to
plague the boy. This seems unlikely though, especially
considering the timing of her death. She lived in St. Louis and
had died of multiple sclerosis on January 26, 1949 - a number of
days after the phenomena surrounding Robbie began. However the
family did feel there was some connection, as was evidenced in
the written history of the mystery.

Many of the early
events in the case were chronicled by the Jesuit
priests who later performed the exorcism.
Apparently, a diary was kept and it was the same
diary that was heard about by author William Peter
Blatty when he was a student at Georgetown
University in 1949. He first became interested in
the story after reading about in newspaper articles
and discussed it with his instructor, the Rev.
Thomas Bermingham, S.J.. The "diary" of the Robbie
Doe case came to light in the fall of 1949 under
rather odd circumstances. Father Eugene B.
Gallagher, S.J., who was on the faculty of
Georgetown, was lecturing on the topic of exorcisms
when one of his students, the son of a psychiatrist
at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, spoke of
a diary that had been kept by the Jesuits involved
in the Robbie Doe exorcism. Father Gallagher asked
the psychiatrist, who may have been one of the
professionals involved in the early stages of the
case, for a copy of the diary and eventually
received a 16-page document that was titled "Case
Study by Jesuit Priests". It had apparently been
intended to be used a guide for future exorcisms.
Blatty asked to see a copy of the diary, but his
request was refused.

He later turned
back to newspapers for information about the case
and discovered that one of them actually listed the
name of the priest involved. His name was Rev.
William S. Bowdern, S.J. of St. Louis. Bowdern
refused to comment on the case for the newspaper
reports, as priests who perform exorcisms are said
to be sworn to secrecy. Blatty tried contacting him
anyway but the priest refused to cooperate. Out of
respect, Blatty changed the identity of the
possession victim in his book to a young girl, but
the exorcist of the novel remains an apparently
thinly veiled portrait of Bowdern.

Father Bowdern passed away in 1983, never
publicly acknowledging the fact that he was involved in the St.
Louis case. He had talked with other Jesuits though and
eventually these stories reached a man named Thomas Allen, an
author and contributing editor to National Geographic. He
managed to find one of the participants in the case, Walter
Halloran, S.J., who was then living in a small town in
Minnesota. Halloran was suspicious at first but he did admit
that there had been a diary. But was it the diary that fell into
the hands of Father Gallagher? Maybe or maybe not...

According to legend, the diary that Halloran
had access to later turned up as a 26-page document of the case
that was literally snatched out of the old Alexian Brothers
hospital just before it was demolished, so where did the 16-page
diary come from? And what happened to it? Accounts have it that
Father Gallagher later loaned his 16-page diary to Father Brian
McGrath, S.J., then dean of Georgetown University, in the spring
of 1950. When Gallagher later tried to retrieve the diary, he
was told that seven pages of the diary had been lost. Only nine
of the 16 pages remained and they were only photocopies.

And what about the later 26-page diary?
Sources say that this longer document was found in the Alexian
Brothers Hospital on South Broadway in St. Louis. The old
psychiatric wing of the hospital was being torn down in 1978 and
workmen were sent in to remove furniture from that part of the
building. One of these men found the document in a desk drawer
of a locked room and he gave it to his supervisors, who in turn
passed it on to hospital administrators. It was eventually
identified as the work of Rev. Raymond Bishop, S.J., a priest
who had participated in the exorcism. The manuscript was locked
away but Father Halloran had access to it. He made a copy of the
diary and sent it to Allen, who published a book about it in
1993.

As it has turned out, the only details that
we have about the case have come through the "diary" and from
witnesses who were present at the time. The Catholic Church has
never released details of the story. The diary does reveal
details though, many of which have been overlooked and forgotten
over the years.

As mentioned already, the strange noises and
scratching in the house progressed into actual witnessed attacks
on Robbie himself. Worried that the incidents might have
something to do with Aunt Tillie, Robbie's mother attempted to
make contact with her spirit. According to the priest's diary,
she asked questions aloud and implored Tillie's spirit, if it
was really her, to knock three times and make herself known.
Allegedly, Robbie, his mother and his grandmother all felt a
wave of air pass over them and then heard three knocks on the
floor. Robbie's mother asked again, this time for four knocks
and they again came in reply. They were followed by scratching
sounds on the bed mattress, which then began to shake and
vibrate onto the floor. And while these events must have
certainly been chilling, it still seems unlikely that they could
have been involved with Aunt Tillie, or her ghost.

There are other explanations for what was
going on. Many believe that Robbie may have been the victim of
"poltergeist-like phenomena", where unknowing people actually
manifest a form of psychokinesis that causes objects to move
about in their presence. It often centers around troubled young
people and has been documented many times over the years. Other
principals in the case would further explore this explanation.

Another explanation, and one offered by more
people that you might imagine, was that the boy truly was
possessed and that the invisible presence wreaking havoc in the
house was not connected to Aunt Tillie at all.

By this time, the family was becoming
desperate. They began seeking help for Robbie and according to
one account from 1975, called in two Lutheran ministers and a
rabbi. Robbie had been baptized a Lutheran at birth, so one has
to wonder why a rabbi was called to the house, although some
have suggested that perhaps one of the ministers had asked him
along. The account goes on to say that while the rabbi was
examining the boy, Robbie suddenly began to shout in an unknown
tongue. After listening for a few moments, the rabbi announced
that he was speaking in Hebrew! Not only that, but the reports
add that a professor from Washington University would later hear
the boy's speech and he insisted that Robbie was speaking
Aramaic, an ancient language of Palestine. If this account is
accurate, we have to ask how a 13-year boy from Maryland would
have learned to speak Aramaic?

Rev. Luther Schulze, one of the Lutheran
ministers and the pastor from the family's own church, tried
praying with Robbie and his parents in their home and then with
Robbie alone. He took the boy to the church to pray with him and
he begged whatever was bothering him to leave. It didn't help
however and the strange afflictions continued. The weird noises
continued to be heard in the house and Robbie's bed went on
shaking and rocking so that he was unable to get any sleep at
night. Finally, in February, Schulze decided to question whether
the house was haunted, or the boy was. He offered to let Robbie
spend the night in his home and his parents quickly agreed. They
were anxious to try anything that might help by this time.

That night, Mrs. Schulze went to the guest
room and Robbie and the minister retired to the twin beds
located in the master bedroom. About ten minutes later, Schulze
reported that he heard the sound of Robbie's bed creaking and
shaking. He also heard strange scratching noises inside of the
walls, just like the ones that had been heard at Robbie's own
house. Schulze quickly switched on the lights and clearly saw
the vibrating bed. When he prayed for it to stop, the vibration
grew even more violent. He stated that Robbie was wide awake but
he was completely still and was not moving in a way that would
cause the bed to shake.

Schulze then suggested that Robbie try and
sleep in a heavy armchair that was located across the room.
While Schulze watched him closely, the chair began to move.
First, it scooted backward several inches and its legs jolted
forward and back. The minister told Robbie to raise his legs and
to add his full weight to the chair but that wasn't enough to
stop the chair from moving. Moments later, it literally slammed
against the wall and then it tipped over and deposited the boy
unhurt onto the floor.

Trying not to be frightened or discouraged,
Rev. Schulze made a pallet of blankets on the floor for Robbie
to sleep on. As soon as the boy fell asleep though, the pallet
began to slide across the floor and under one of the beds. When
Robbie was startled awake by the movement, he raised up and
struck his head on one of the bedposts. Again, the minister made
up the pallet, only to this time have it whip across the floor
and slide under the other bed. Robbie's hands were visible the
entire time and his body was taut with tension. The blankets
reportedly did not wrinkle at all as they moved across the
floor, as they should have if someone was pushing them.

After this active night, Schulze was now both
puzzled and a little afraid. He suggested that Robbie's parents
take the boy to see a doctor and a psychologist to rule out any
kind of physical or mental problems that might be causing the
phenomena to take place. The minister also contacted J.B. Rhine,
the famed founder of the parapsychology laboratory at Duke
University. He explained what was going on and Rhine and his
partner and wife, Louisa Rhine, drove up from North Carolina to
see the boy. Unfortunately, no activity took place while the
investigator was present, but Rhine did deduce that it sounded
like a classic poltergeist case in which the boy's unconscious
abilities were influencing the objects around him. The details
fit well with other experimental results that Rhine had been
obtaining.

And while the explanation suggested by Rhine
must have appealed to the minister (as he had contacted the
investigator in the first place), he did an abrupt about-face a
short time later when the phenomena took another turn. A week or
so after the incident at Schulze's home, bloody scratches began
to appear on the boy's body. Perhaps startled by this new turn
of events, Schulze suggested that the family contact a Catholic
priest.

And here's where things get (if possible)
even more confusing.

According to some sources, Robbie's family
then turned to the Catholic Church for help and his father went
to the nearby St. James Church in Mount Rainier, Maryland. Here,
he met with a young priest named Edward Albert Hughes. He was
the assistant pastor of the church at the time. He was skeptical
and reluctant to get involved in the matter, but he did agree to
go and see Robbie. During the visit, Robbie allegedly addressed
the priest in Latin, a language that he did not know. Shaken,
Hughes was said to have applied to his archbishop for permission
to conduct an exorcism. The sources go on to say that the ritual
was performed at Georgetown Hospital in February. Robbie seemed
to go into a trance and he thrashed about and spoke in tongues.
Hughes ordered the boy to be put into restraints but he somehow
managed to work a piece of metal spring loose from the bed and
he slashed the priest with it. The stories say that Hughes
subsequently left St. James, suffered a nervous breakdown and
during masses that he held later in life, he could only hold the
consecrated host aloft in one hand.

That was the story anyway, although according
to research done by Mark Opsasnick in 1999, that I confirmed on
my own three years later, none of this may have happened at all.
This incident appears only in the book Possessed by Thomas
Allen. There are a number of other suppositions and possible
problems in the book and this is one of them. The stories about
Father Hughes turned out to be almost totally inaccurate. Father
Hughes became assistant pastor of St. James Church under Rev.
William Canning in June 1948 and he served without a break until
June 1960. (He was later reassigned to St. James in 1973 and
stayed there until his death in 1980.) Church records do not
indicate that he ever suffered a breakdown, nor that he ever
even made an attempt to exorcize Robbie at Georgetown University
Hospital. However, Robbie was checked into the hospital under
his real name for several days during the period when the
alleged exorcism attempt took place, but that is all. Records
say that he underwent extensive medial and psychological
evaluations.

Father Hughes also never actually visited
Robbie in his home. In truth, his mother brought him to St.
James for the only consultation. There is nothing to suggest
that Robbie spoke to the priest in Latin and no evidence to say
that Father Hughes was ever slashed with a bedspring. Those who
knew Hughes personally remember him suffering no injuries during
this period and the fact is, the church social calendar showed
him quite busy during the weeks after Robbie's release from the
hospital.

It's possible that the confusion about
Hughes' part in the case came from the assistant pastor that he
had later in life. According to this pastor, Frank Bober, Hughes
confided in him about the first exorcism attempt. Bober later
became an important figure in the case, being very accessible to
journalists. He has appeared in literally dozens of articles,
books and documentaries about the case and Thomas Allen cited
him as being "extremely reliable" about Hughes' role in the
incidents. Others believe that Bober "dramatized" many of the
re-tellings of the events and created much of the confusion that
surrounds this part of the case. Who knows?

But even if we consider the idea that this
part of the story didn't actually happen, what was documented as
occurring around this same time was strange enough that all of
that becomes almost irrelevant.

Robbie's hospital stay was documented as
occurring between February 28, 1949 and March 2, 1949 but
according to the priest's "diary", strange things began to
happen on February 26. The statement records that "there
appeared scratches on the boy's body for about four successive
nights. After the fourth night, words were written in printed
form. These letters were clear but seemed to have been scratched
on the body by claws."

At about this same time, Robbie's mother
began to suggest that perhaps a trip away from Maryland might
free the boy from the strange happenings. She thought that
perhaps they could leave their troubles behind by visiting St.
Louis. Robbie's mother was a native of the city and still had
many relatives there. The more she considered this, the better
the idea seemed. And apparently, the haunting entity agreed
because the word "LOUIS" inexplicably appeared on Robbie's rib
cage. When this "skin branding" occurred, Robbie's hands were
always visible and his mother specifically notes that he could
not have scratched the words himself. He had been under
observation at the time and the words, according to witnesses,
had simply appeared.

The priest's diary even noted that the
writing also appeared on Robbie's back. Later on, while in St.
Louis, there was some question raised about sending Robbie to
school while in the city but the message "NO" appeared on his
wrists. A large letter "N" also appeared on each of his legs and
his mother feared disobeying what she saw as a supernatural
order. It has been suggested that perhaps Robbie created the
writing himself with his mind, either consciously or
unconsciously. With that in question, it should be noted that
before his parents consulted a priest, they also had him
examined by a psychiatrist. He reported that the boy was quite
normal, as did a medical doctor who gave him a complete
physical.

At this point, records do indicate that
Robbie's mother took him to consult with Father Hughes at the
St. James Church. During this one documented visit, he suggested
that the family use blessed candles, holy water and special
prayers and to perhaps rid the boy of his problems. Robbie's
mother began the use of the blessed candles and on one occasion,
a comb flew violently through the air and struck them, snuffing
out the flames. Later, an orange and a pear flew across Robbie's
room. The kitchen table once overturned in the boy's presence,
but without his aid, and milk and food flew off of counters and
onto the floor. At another time, a coat jerked from a hanger and
a bible landed at Robbie's feet. A chair that the boy was
sitting in spun around so fast that he was unable to stop it.
Finally, he was said to have discontinued attending school
because his desk refused to remain in the same place.

According to records, Robbie had been removed
from the eighth grade at Bladensburg Junior High School early in
1949. There were many fellow students and neighbors who later
spoke of him being a problem child and often into trouble.
Although school records do not reflect such problems, they may
have been caused by the alleged strange occurrences that plagued
Robbie at the time. If people thought that he was faking the
movement of his desk, the displacement of objects and other
reported happenings, they might have come to believe that he was
a troublemaker or looking for attention. For those who believe
the young man was never possessed at all, the later reports from
those who knew Robbie only strengthened their disbelief.

Some of the reports are a little odd though,
including stories about neighbors hearing strange cries coming
from the house and banging objects. There is also the account
that comes from a fellow student of Robbie's in 1949. He said
that "we were in the eighth grade and we were in class together
at Bladensburg Junior High. He was sitting in a chair and it was
one of those deals with one arm attached and it looked like he
was shaking the desk - the desk was shaking and vibrating
extremely fast and I remember the teacher yelling at him to stop
and I remember he kind of yelled back "I'm not doing it!" and
they took him out of class and that was the last I ever saw him
in school…. I don't know if he was doing it or what was doing it
because I can't get it clear in my mind. It was very
close-mouthed in the neighborhood at first - no one knew
anything. I hadn't seen him in some time and I was wondering
what happened to him. I would still see his father around and I
remember going to his house and his German grandmother came out
and she could barely speak English and she told me he was in St.
Louis visiting relatives and would not be back for awhile. He
hadn't been in school and from what I saw I knew something
strange was going on but I didn't know what. When that
Washington Post article came out later that summer, I knew from
the details it was him."

The activity reportedly continued at the
family home. The priest's diary went on to add that "the mother
took the bottle of holy water and sprinkled all of the rooms."
She then took the bottle and placed it on a shelf but it snapped
into the air and flew onto the floor, although it did not break.

A 1975 report stated that attempts were also
made to baptize Robbie into the Catholic faith in order to help
him. The press mentioned that one of these attempts was made
during Robbie's hospital stay (not an exorcism as was later
reported) and then later in St. Louis. One baptism attempt was
allegedly made in February 1949. It was said that as Robbie's
uncle was driving him to the rectory for the ceremony, the boy
suddenly glared at him, grabbed him by the throat and shouted,
"You son of a bitch, you think I'm going to be baptized but you
are going to be fooled!"

The Catholic baptism ritual usually only
takes about 15 minutes but for Robbie, it reportedly lasted for
several hours. It was said that when the priest asked "Do you
renounce the devil and all his works?" Robbie would go into such
a thrashing rage that he had to be restrained.

As mentioned, Robbie was released from the
hospital on March 2. During that time, a strange incident took
place that I learned of almost by accident from a source who
grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. He said that the father of
a friend of his told him about the incident in the summer of
1982. The older man said that it was one of the most frightening
moments of his life and that it occurred in the old infirmary in
Georgetown in 1949. There had been an outbreak of flu that year
and most of the 12-15 year-old boys in the neighborhood
(including him) were moved to the infirmary for observation. "He
said that one night, around 9:00 p.m.," my correspondent told
me, "two doctors and a boy who looked about 14 walked into the
room that he and a number of boys were housed in. Needless to
say, my friend's father, as well as the other boys, had known
nothing about this boy. My friend’s father said that he looked
directly at the boy as did the other boys. He said that the boy
glared into his eyes. He said that at that moment he was
terrified and that some of the boys began saying aloud the
Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary. He said that he was so frightened
by the boy's eyes that he could not sleep for many nights. He
said that after about five minutes, the boy and the doctors left
the room. My friend's father said to me that he found out about
a year later that the boy was the one who was possessed by the
devil and that the boy was held over night in the infirmary
before being moved to St. Louis."

Shortly after being released from the
hospital and being found normal, Robbie boarded a train to St.
Louis with his parents. The family was graciously taken in by
relatives in Normandy, Missouri, which is located on the
northwest side of the greater St. Louis area. Here, the boy's
mother hoped that he might be freed from the strange and
horrifying events. For those readers who are convinced that
nothing was occurring in this case aside from overactive
imaginations and silly superstition, they may want to consider
the trip to St. Louis itself as evidence that something strange
(supernatural or not) was taking place. The fact that Robbie's
parents would uproot the boy from his home, his father would
travel back and forth, jeopardizing his employment and they
would all travel halfway across the county in a last ditch
effort to find help is suggestive (if not downright convincing)
that terrible things were indeed happening.

Unfortunately, Robbie did not improve in St.
Louis. His aunt and uncle in Normandy, as well as various other
relatives, witnessed more of the "skin brandings", as well as
saw his bed and mattress shaking on many occasions. On March 8,
1949, the shaking of the mattress and scratching continued. A
stool that was sitting near the bed was seen flying across the
room by Robbie's cousin. The cousin was so concerned about
Robbie that he even tried lying down on the bed beside him to
stop the mattress from shaking. To his dismay, it didn't work.
Finally, one of the relatives, who had attended St. Louis
University, went to see her old teacher there, Rev. Raymond J.
Bishop, S.J. She asked him if he might be able to assist Robbie
and while we have no idea what his initial reply may have been,
he did agree to look into the case. It was Bishop who brought
William Bowdern into the case.

Bowdern was not on the faculty of St. Louis
University. In 1949, he was the pastor of St. Francis Xavier
Church, located at the corner of Grand and Lindell. He was a
native of St. Louis and had served as a chaplain during World
War II. He had many years experience dealing with people and
their problems and he listened carefully to the story that
Bishop told him. Then, he and Bishop went to Paul Reinert, S.J.,
the president of the university. All of them were skeptical
about the case and concerned with bringing embarrassment to the
church and the college but decided that it might be well to have
the boy say some prayers and to give him the priestly blessing.

Apparently, Father Bishop first went to the
house alone. He came to bless the house and the room in which
Robbie slept. A second-class holy relic of St. Margaret Mary was
pinned on the boy's bed. But even after the blessing and in
spite of the relic, the bed still shook and swayed and the
scratches still appeared all over the boy's body. Bishop then
sprinkled holy water on the bed in the form of a cross and the
movement suddenly ceased. Moments later, it started up again
after Bishop stepped out of the room. Then, a sharp pain
allegedly struck Robbie in the stomach and he cried out. His
mother pulled back the bed covers and lifted the boy's pajama
top to reveal red lines that zigzagged across the boy's abdomen.
During this entire time, Robbie was in clear view of at least
six witnesses.

The next two nights passed in the same way,
with a shaking mattress, scratching and objects being thrown
about. On March 11, Father Bishop returned to the home and this
time brought Father Bowdern with him. The Jesuits were still
skeptical about the case but open-minded enough to observe the
boy and also to study the literature available about demonic
attacks on humans. The priests came and prayed again and this
time, the activity did not respond. However, as soon as Bishop
and Bowdern left, a loud noise was reportedly heard in Robbie's
room and five relatives rushed to see what had happened. They
discovered that a 75-pound bookcase had swiveled in a complete
circle, a bench had turned over and a crucifix that one of the
priests had left under Robbie's pillow had moved to the end of
the bed. As they rushed into the room, the mattress was
violently shaking and bouncing once more.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable,
clear-cut information about how the decision was reached by the
Jesuits to perform an exorcism. According to church doctrine,
there are a number of different conditions that have to be met
to show that someone is truly possessed. Whether or not these
conditions were met is not for me to say or judge but
regardless, Bowdern and Bishop went to Archbishop Joseph E.
Ritter for permission to perform an exorcism on March 16. Ritter
had a reputation as a down-to-earth progressive and earlier in
the decade, he had campaigned hard to integrate the St. Louis
schools and parishes. Later, he would also have a large role in
the sweeping reforms that came to the church as Vatican II. The
Jesuits, who already have a tense history with the regular
church, had no idea how Ritter would respond to the request.
Surprisingly, he promptly agreed.

And the exorcism began...

After the exorcism was started at the rectory,
the priests found Robbie too much to deal with on
their own and moved him to the old psychiatric wing
of the Alexian Brothers Hospital.

The chronology
throughout the remainder of the case is extremely
confusing. It is not clear how long Robbie stayed at
his relative's house but it is known that he was
taken to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in south St.
Louis, possibly for as long as a month, and that
portions of the exorcism were also carried out in
the rectory of the St. Francis Xavier Church. The
rectory has since been demolished and replaced.
Stories have circulated from students who once
attended St. Louis University that strange sounds
were often heard coming from the rectory during the
period when Robbie was there and noxious odors
experienced wafting from the windows. The attention
that this brought to the rectory may have been part
of the decision to move Robbie to the Alexian
Brothers Hospital. This may simply be part of the
folklore that currently surround the case, it's not
certain.

It also isn't certain how many people were
actually actively involved in the exorcism. The names of the
exorcists given out in St. Louis were Father Bowdern, Father
Bishop and Father Lawrence Kenny. Father Charles O'Hara of
Marquette University in Milwaukee was also present as a witness
(he later passed on information about what he saw there to
Father Eugene Gallagher at Georgetown) and there were
undoubtedly a several hospital staff members and seminary
students who were also in attendance.

One of these students was Walter Halloran,
the priest who passed along the 26-page diary to Thomas Allen.
At that time, he was a strapping young former football player
who had been asked along to hold Robbie down. Exorcisms were
known for being often violent rituals and the Jesuits must have
felt that the young man would prove to be very useful. For
reason though, Halloran was removed from the exorcism about one
week before it came to end, leaving his accounts of it rather
incomplete.

And while Halloran would go on to have his
own uncertain (and often conflicting) recollections of the case,
hospital staff members would remember the events with fear.
Steve Erdmann, who wrote about the case in 1975, personally knew
at least one of the nurses involved. The man's name was Ernest
Schaffer and he was barely able to talk about the case more than
two decades later. He stated that the priests had a "terrible
time" during Robbie's hospital stay. He had many conversations
with the priests and believed that what he saw was supernatural
in origin. He said that he cleaned vomit out of the boy's room
on several different occasions.

The exorcism apparently started at the home
of Robbie's relatives. The priests came late in the evening and
after Robbie went to bed, the ritual began. The boy was said to
go into a trance, his bed shook and welts and scratches appeared
on his body. Bishop was said to have wiped away blood that
welled up in the scratches while Halloran attempted to hold the
boy down. An exorcism is said to be a dire spiritual and
physical struggle. The demon that takes control of the person
also tries to break the faith of the exorcist involved, as was
evidenced in the earlier account of the 1928 exorcism in Iowa.
Father Bowdern had prepared himself for the exhausting events
through a religious fast of prayer, bread and water. It is said
that from the time he first learned of Robbie's plight until the
exorcism had run its course, Bowdern lost nearly 40 pounds.

As the prayers commanding the departure of
the evil spirit began, Robbie winced and rolled in a sudden
seizure of pain. Over the next two hours, the boy was branded
and scratched 30 times on his stomach, chest, throat, thighs,
calves and back. When Bowdern demanded that the demon reveal
itself, the words "WELL" and "SPITE" appeared on the boy's
chest. Another time, the word "HELL" appeared in red welts as
the boy rocked back and forth, apparently in pain. All the
while, he reportedly cursed and screamed obscenities in a voice
that "ranged from deep bass to falsetto". The ritual came to an
end on that occasion near dawn but little progress had been
made.

The ordeal continued for many weeks and
through many readings of the exorcism ritual. According to the
witnesses, the boy's responses became more violent and repulsive
as time went on. He was said to speak in Latin, in a variety of
voices, in between bouts of screams and curses. He spat in the
faces of the priests who knelt and stood by his bed and his
spittle and vomit struck them with uncanny accuracy and over
great distances. He punched and slapped the priests and the
witnesses. He constantly urinated and he belched and passed gas
that was said to have an unbelievable stench. He was even said
to have taunted the priests and to have confronted them with
information about themselves that he could not possibly have
known. His body thrashed and contorted into seemingly impossible
shapes and would continue during the nighttime hours. Each
morning though, he would appear to be quite normal and would
profess to have no memory of the events that took place after
dark. He usually spent the day reading comics or playing board
games with the student assistants.

Father O'Hara told Father Gallagher something
even stranger. "One night the boy brushed off his handlers," he
reportedly said, "and soared through the air at Father Bowdern
standing some distance from the bed with a ritual book in his
hands. Presumably Bowdern was about to be attacked but the boy
got no further than the book. And when his hands hit that - I
assure you, Gene, I saw this with my own eyes - he didn't tear
the book, he dissolved it! The book vaporized into confetti and
fell in small fine pieces to the floor!"

The ritual continued with the prayers being
recited every day, despite Robbie's rabid reaction to them. The
exorcism seemed virtually useless and so the priests requested
permission to instruct Robbie in the Catholic faith. They felt
that his conversion would help to strengthen their fight against
the entity controlling the boy. His parents consented and he was
prepared for his first communion. During this time of
instruction, Robbie seemed to quiet somewhat and he was moved to
the psychiatric wing of the Alexian Brothers Hospital. He seemed
to be enjoying his lessons in the Catholic faith but this time
of peace would not last. As Robbie prepared to receive
communion, the priests literally had to drag him into the
church. He broke out in a rage that was worse than anything the
exorcists could remember.

The family was exhausted and was ready to
give up.

Father Bowdern began searching for a new
approach and so he made arrangements to return Robbie to
Maryland and continue the ritual. It was said that during the
train ride, Robbie became maniacal and struck Bowdern in the
testicles. He reportedly cried "that's a nutcracker for you,
isn't it?" The others present wrestled with Robbie until he
finally fell asleep.

Bowdern found no accommodations to continue
with Robbie in Maryland. No one would have anything to do with
the boy and so he returned with him to St. Louis. Robbie's
instructions in the Catholic faith continued. It was now Holy
Week, the week before Easter, and Robbie was taken to White
House, a Jesuit retreat overlooking the Mississippi River. As
they walked the Stations of the Cross, located outside, Robbie
suddenly became nervous and agitated. He ran away from the
priests and launched himself toward the bluffs that loomed over
the river. Halloran, the seminary student, tackled the boy and
managed to subdue him. Shortly after, they returned the boy to
the hospital.

The exorcism was now at an impasse. Seeking a
solution, Bowdern again plunged into the literature regarding
possession. He learned of an 1870 case that took place in
Wisconsin that seemed similar to Robbie's plight and he devised
a new strategy. On the night of April 18, the ritual resumed.
Bowdern forced Robbie to wear a chain of religious medals and to
hold a crucifix in his hands. Suddenly, Robbie became strangely
contrite and he began to ask questions about the meaning of
certain Latin prayers. Bowdern ignored him though, refusing to
engage the entity in conversation, and he instead demanded to
know the name of the demon and when he would depart.

Robbie exploded in a rage. Five witnesses
held him down while he screamed that he was a "fallen angel" but
Bowdern continued on with the ritual. He recited it incessantly
for hours until Robbie suddenly interrupted in a loud, masculine
voice, identifying himself as "St. Michael the Archangel". The
voice ordered the demon to depart. Robbie's body then went into
violent contortions and spasms. Then, he fell quiet. A moment
later, he sat up, smiled and then spoke in a normal voice. "He's
gone", Robbie said and then told the priests of a vision that he
had of St. Michael holding a flaming sword.

The exorcism was finally over.

But what possessed Robbie Doe? Many believe
that Robbie may have been faking the whole thing. Mark
Opsasnick, during his research into the boy's troubled
childhood, began to feel that the case may have started as a way
to get attention, or to get out of school, and that it
snowballed into the mess that it became. While he does some
great investigative work into the early stages of the case, and
does have many relevant points about Robbie's childhood and the
many flaws in the chronicling of the case, he is too quick to
dismiss some of the strange things that occurred in front of
multiple witnesses. His report never delves at all into the
events in St. Louis and in this way, leaves out just about
everything that took place that was so hard to explain.

And there are other theories. Some would
agree that while Robbie was not possessed, he was afflicted with
another unexplainable paranormal disturbance. Earlier, I briefly
mentioned "poltergeist-like" activity and how it can sometimes
be associated with disturbed teenagers. While medical doctors
have no interest in this, a few more adventurous scientists have
grudgingly speculated that perhaps the human mind has abilities
and energies that are still unrecognized. These energies just
might be able to make objects move, writing to appear and beds
to shake. If it can really happen, it just might explain what
happen to Robbie Doe. As it happened, this turned out to be
Reverend Luther Schulze's theory on what happened in Maryland.

Many are not willing to believe in any of
this however and not surprisingly, skepticism runs rampant when
it comes to the "St. Louis Exorcism Case". Many feel that Robbie
suffered from a mental illness and not demonic possession. He
may have been hallucinating or suffering from some weird
psychosomatic illness that caused him to behave so strangely, to
curse and scream and to thrash about so violently.

It should be noted though that people who
have suggested that all of this was nothing more than a hoax or
a mental illness are all people who were in no way involved in
the case. The opinions of the priests and students who were
present, the workers at Alexian Brothers and others who were
there during most of the events that took place have to be
considered and acknowledged far beyond those who speculate and
yet were not even born in 1949.

In spite of the skeptics though, there were
(and are) many who believe the events were real. They have no
explanation for what took place in 1949 - and memories of those
events still linger today.

AFTER THE
EXORCISM…

Robbie left St. Louis with his parents 12
days later and returned to Maryland. He wrote to Father Bowdern
in May 1949 and told him that he was happy and had a new dog.
Robbie was a normal, typical American boy of the late 1940's. No
matter whether you believe in demons or possession or not, most
can agree that "something" very strange happened to him in 1949.
If you believe that he faked the whole thing, then consider the
trauma that he must have experienced when the joke went too far
and he found himself subjected to an exorcism, which is
certainly not a pleasant experience. If you believe that he was
truly possessed, or even mentally ill, then we have to consider
him a victim of an unexplainable horror. The only person who
knew what really happened during that terrible winter and spring
was Robbie himself and he never spoke about it again. Those who
gently tried to prod his memory soon learned that he had only
dim recollections of what had occurred anyway.

Robbie went on to attend a Catholic High
School and remains a devout Catholic today. The boy of 1949
later went on to get married and to raise three children. There
are a number of rumors that have swirled about this unfortunate
man over the years, from the fact that he committed suicide to
the claim that he was an American Airlines pilot. All that I can
say is that through quite a bit of research, I have been able to
learn the identity of "Robbie Doe". However, to get that
information, I had to promise that I would never reveal who he
was, or where he lives now. I will simply say that he had no
further occurrences of anything supernatural ever occurred in
his life. He still lives today in the Washington D.C. area.

Father Bowdern believed until the end of his
life that he and his fellow priests had been battling a demonic
entity. His supporters in this maintain that there were many
witnesses to the alleged supernatural events that took place and
that no other explanations existed for what was seen. A full
report that was filed by the Catholic Church stated that the
case of Robbie Doe was a "genuine demonic possession." According
to Father John Nicola, who had the opportunity to review the
report, he noted that 41 persons had signed a document attesting
to the fact that they had witnessed paranormal phenomena in the
case.

The only mention that was ever made of the
exorcism was in the August 19, 1949 issue of the Catholic
Review, a semi-official church publication. Archbishop
Joseph E. Ritter of St. Louis appointed a Jesuit professor to
conduct an investigation, but the results were never made
public. Ritter asked his subordinates to stop talking about the
incident after receiving the report because, according to the
source, "It's not that they were hiding anything. It just was
that they felt that the overall effect of the thing was
counterproductive."

As mentioned, Father Bowdern never publicly
spoke of the exorcism, both to protect Robbie's privacy and also
because he didn't feel that it was right to do so. As he told
Father Walter Halloran: "Make a statement about it and you'd
have a whole group of people who would want to destroy it, and
you'd have another group of people who would want to make it a
true exorcism. I don't think they [Church authorities] are ever
going to say a word about it. I think they will never say
whether it was or it wasn't. You and I know it. We were there."

Father Bowdern took the knowledge of the
exorcism with him to the grave. He remained the pastor of Xavier
until 1956, went on to other assignments, ending his career at
Ours of Xavier. And while he never spoke of what happened in
1949, there are rumors that he may have performed another
exorcism before he retired. In June 1950, the bishop of
Stuebenville, Ohio, aware of the 1949 St. Louis Exorcism, wrote
to Archbishop Ritter and asked for help. The Ohio bishop said
that a young man in the Stuebenville dioceses was attacking
priests and nuns and it was believed that he might be possessed.
Ritter, through his chancellor, asked Bowdern to look into the
matter but there is no further information as to what might have
occurred next. Father Bowdern passed away in 1983 at the age of
86.

Father Raymond Bishop, after 22 years at St,
Louis University, was sent to Creighton University in Omaha,
Nebraska. He taught here for more than 20 years and died in 1978
at the age of 72.

Father Walter Halloran, who later served as
the assistant pastor of the St. Joseph's Cathedral in San Diego,
California, was only a seminary student at the time of the
exorcism. He was present during the sessions held at the St.
Francis Xavier rectory and at the Alexian Brothers Hospital but
not at the culmination of the events at the White House retreat.
His statements about the exorcism have been conflicting (at
best) over the years. On one hand, he states that he was not
convinced that Robbie exhibited any sort of unnatural strength
when he was "possessed". He was punched by the boy several times
and believed it to be nothing more than an agitated adolescent
could summon. He also didn't recall any foreign languages that
the boy spoke, other than Latin, which he could have mimicked
listening to the priests. This is in sharp contrast to other
reports, including those of Father Bishop and Father Bowdern.

Perhaps in contemplation, Halloran later
reversed some of his comments and later told an interviewer that
while he was not an expert enough in the field to make a
determination as to whether the possession was officially
genuine or not, he did believe that it was real. "I have always
thought in my mind that it was," he said. In addition, while
being interviewed on the show of popular St. Louis radio Dave
Glover, Halloran dismissed the idea that, as in the movie,
Robbie ever levitated off the bed. However, he did add that on
several occasions, the iron bed that the boy was on did actually
levitate off the floor!

…. AND INTO
HISTORY

While the Jesuit community, out of respect
for Bowdern and Archbishop Ritter, kept the secret of the
exorcism, Reverend Luther Schulze in Maryland had no
responsibility to do so. Soon after the family returned home in
April, Schulze noticed that they were not coming to his church
on Sundays. He stopped by to see them and learned that Robbie
had converted to Catholicism that his parents planned to follow
suit. Schulze apparently felt that the conversion released him
from any confidential relationship that he had with them and so
on August 9, he told a meeting of the Washington, D.C. branch of
the Society for Parapsychology that he had witnessed a
"poltergeist" in the home of a "Mr. and Mrs. John Doe", who
lived in a Washington suburb. He used Robbie's actual first name
and told them of the strange manifestations that he had seen in
his home. He added that the boy was later taken to a city in the
Midwest but did not speak of the exorcism, which he had no real
information about.

But somehow, the secret leaked out anyway.
News of a poltergeist outbreak reached the newspapers and
Schulze made himself available for interviews. No exorcism was
ever mentioned in the article, which kept the identities secret,
but somehow, one of the accounts garbled the remarks from the
meeting that Schulze attended and reported that three exorcisms
had taken place in the Midwestern city. The idea of an exorcism
was so much more interesting to the newspapers that the
poltergeist story was abandoned in favor of the alleged
exorcisms. Reporters began calling contacts at the archdiocese
in Washington and the queries started a chain of events. A
spokesman for Archbishop O'Boyle in Washington refused to
provide any information to the press but, as mentioned, details
ended up being leaked to the Catholic Review, the
nationally syndicated paper. In the edition that was dated on
August 19, a three-paragraph story appeared under a Washington
dateline. It read:

A 14 year-old Washington boy whose history of
diabolical possession was widely reported in the press last
week, was successfully exorcised by a priest after being
received into the Catholic Church, it was learned here.

The priest refused to discuss the case in any
way. However, it is known that several attempts had been made to
free the boy of the manifestations.

A Catholic priest was called upon for help.
When the boy expressed the desire to enter the church, with the
consent of his parents he received religious instruction. Later
the priest baptized him and then successfully performed the
ritual of exorcism. The parents of the afflicted boy are
non-Catholics.

Strangely, at that point though, the
possession had not been "widely reported" and the brief story
seemed to be little more than an attempt by the Church to
control the story. As it turned out though, it only whetted the
appetites of the Washington press. Jeremiah O'Leary, an
assistant city editor for the Washington Star-News,
spotted the story and began trying to track down information. He
later admitted that he called every priest that he knew before
finally publishing a short story that was printed on the
afternoon of August 19 on an inside page of the paper. The
following day, the Washington Post printed a long and
detailed story about the exorcism on the front page. They
reported that the exorcism occurred in both Washington and St.
Louis and had been carried out by "a Jesuit in his 50's". I have
never been able to find any contemporary reports on the exorcism
in St. Louis newspapers. The secret of the exorcism was finally
out.

One of the readers of the newspaper stories
was William Peter Blatty, an undergraduate at Georgetown
University. Blatty, who was then in his junior year, was
considering becoming a Jesuit. He became a writer instead and in
1970, began work on a book that would be based on the stories
that he heard about the exorcist's "diary" and the articles that
he read in college. As mentioned earlier, Blatty managed to
track down Father Bowdern as he was doing research for the book
but the Jesuit did not want to talk about the case. He did
mention to him that yes, there had been a diary but he could not
help him because of his promise of secrecy and the fear that any
further publicity might disturb Robbie's life, even after more
than two decades.

"My own thoughts", Bowdern later wrote to
Blatty, "were that much good might have come if the case had
been reported, and people had come to realize that the presence
and the activity of the devil is something very real. And
possibly never more real than at the present time… I can assure
you of one thing: The case in which I was involved was the real
thing. I had no doubt about it then and I have no doubt about it
now."

At Bowdern's request, Blatty fictionalized
the events of the exorcism and actually used the more lurid
elements of the 1928 Iowa Exorcism to round out his book. To
further hide the identity of Robbie, he changed the possessed
victim to a young girl and moved the entire sequence from St.
Louis to Washington. The exorcist in the book however, Father
Merrin, is a thinly disguised version of William Bowdern.
In 1971, Blatty's book The Exorcist appeared in print and
became an instant bestseller.

THE DEVIL IN ST.
LOUIS

When Robbie left the Alexian Brothers
Hospital, Brother Rector Cornelius went to the fifth floor
corridor of the old wing, had a statue of St. Michael removed
from Robbie's room, turned a key in the door and stated that the
room was to be kept permanently locked. From that day on, the
Alexian Brothers in St. Louis maintained the secrets of the
exorcism. The existence of Father Bishop's diary also remained a
secret and a copy of it had been placed inside of the room when
it was sealed. Everyone who worked in the hospital though knew
why the room was locked. For years after the exorcism, people
who were involved in the case, or who worked at the hospital,
shared stories of things they heard and saw during the several
week ordeal that occurred in the psychiatric wing. Orderlies
spoke of cleaning up pools of vomit and urine in the boy's
rooms. Staff members and nurses claimed to hear the sounds of
someone screaming and the echoes of demonic laughter coming from
Robbie's room. Most especially though, they spoke of the cold
waves of air that seemed to emanate from the room. No matter how
warm the rest of the hospital was, the area around the door to
the boy's room was always ice cold.

And even after the exorcism ended, something
apparently remained behind. Was it some remnant of the entity
that possessed Robbie or perhaps the impression of the horrific
events that occurred in the room? Whatever it was, the room was
never re-opened. Electrical problems plagued the surrounding
rooms and it was always cold in the hallway outside the door to
this particular room. The entire section of the hospital was
eventually closed but whether or not this was because of the
"exorcism room" is unknown.

As the years passed, tales about the locked
room were passed on to new Brothers who came to serve at the
hospital. They knew that the room was located in a wing for
extremely ill mental patients but did not understand why one
room was kept sealed - until they heard about what had happened
there. The Brothers who had been on the staff in 1949 would not
soon forget what they had seen and heard.

Other Alexians had their own stories to tell
- of banging sounds on their doors at night, voices calling in
the darkened corridors, and more. Staff members would continue
the stories in the years to come and I have personally spoken to
more than a dozen nurses, maintenance people, orderlies and
doctors who have dark and distinct memories of the old wing and
the locked room on the psychiatric floor. Some of them have told
me that sometimes - even after all of these years - they still
dream about that wing and that one locked door.

In May 1976, work began on a new Alexian
Brothers Hospital and in the first phase of the construction,
some of the old outbuildings were torn down and a new six-story
tower with two-story wings was built. In October 1978, the
patients were moved out of the original hospital building and
the contractor ordered the structure to be razed. It was done,
but not without difficulty. Workers on the demolition crew
claimed to be unable to control the wrecking ball when that
floor was taken off. The ball swung around and hit a portion of
a new building but luckily did not damage. This incident seemed
to further enhance the legend of the room - which continued to
grow.

Before the demolition was started, workers
first combed through the building for old furniture that was to
be taken out and sold. One of them found a locked room in the
psychiatric wing and broke in. The room was fully furnished with
a dust-covered bed, nightstand, chairs and a desk table with a
single drawer. Before removing the table, the worker curiously
opened the drawer to see what was inside. He found a small stack
of papers inside but neither he nor anyone else would ever learn
how or why the report was in the drawer in a room that had
presumably been locked since 1949.

The furniture, including all of the items in
the locked room, was sold to a company that owned a nursing home
a short distance away from the hospital. All of that which was
salvaged from the hospital was locked in a room on the fourth
floor of the nursing home and was never used. The nursing home
itself was later torn down and many of these demolition workers,
like the staff people and the city inspectors who had come
through, refused to go on the fourth floor - and were never able
to explain why. What became of the furniture from the locked
room is unknown.

Or at least that's one version of the story…

In recent years, another, stranger version of
the fate of the items within the room has come to light.
According to sources, the furniture was removed from the locked
room at the time of the demolition but was never sold to the
nursing home with the rest of it. The bed, nightstand, chairs
and desk table were instead moved and locked away in the
basement of a rectory in St. Louis. A number of years later, the
rectory was scheduled to be torn down and movers were brought to
haul away a number of items that were left in the basement.
According to one of them, he arrived at the rectory with some
other workers and they were taken down into the basement by a
priest. He unlocked a door to one of the rooms in the back and
let the men inside of it. However, the worker distinctly
remembered that the priest himself refused to set foot inside.
Within the room, they found several pieces of furniture that
they were directed to remove and then seal up into a wooden
crate. After that, the crate was to be placed in a storage
facility and locked. The movers completed the task and then
moved the crate to a storage warehouse that is located almost
directly across from the gates to Scott Air Force base in
Illinois. According to his story, the furniture from the
"Exorcism Room", as it became known, is still here, sealed in a
crate and largely forgotten.

As for the papers the workmen found inside of
the room though, they were far from forgotten. The paper
appeared to be some sort of journal or diary and there was a
letter attached to them that had been written to a Brother
Cornelius that was dated for April 29, 1949. A portion of it
read: "The enclosed report is a summary of the case which you
have known for the past several weeks. The Brother's part of
this case has been so very important that I thought you should
have the case history for your permanent file". It was signed by
Father Raymond J. Bishop, a Jesuit from St. Louis University.
Apparently, Brother Cornelius considered the record best kept in
secret, inside of the sealed off room.

The worker took the papers to his boss, the
contractor for the demolition, who then passed them on to the
administrator of the hospital, a layman. The administrator read
the letter in bewilderment but then started to turn the pages of
the diary. As he began to scan through it, he began to see
references to exorcism and realized that the diary spelled out
all of the secrets of the locked room. His daughter, who was
attending secretarial school and helping out in her father's
office, managed to get a look at the paper before the
administrator locked them away. She recognized the name "Walter
Halloran" in the text as he was an uncle of one of her
classmates. The administrator made contact with the former
seminary student, now a Jesuit priest, and passed on the papers
to him. The diary was then allegedly sealed in a safety deposit
box but only after a carbon copy was made of it. It is this copy
that has been circulated today and provides what little, and
often confusing, information that we have on the 1949 exorcism.

St. Louis legend has it though that this was
not the strangest thing to happen when the locked room was
opened. According to crew members who worked for the Department
of Transportation, "something" was seen emerging from the room
just moments before the wrecking ball claimed it. Whatever it
was, the men likened it to a "cat or a big rat or something". I
wouldn't begin to suggest what this creature might have been,
natural or supernatural, but I will say that it has continued to
add to the legend of the "St. Louis Exorcism Case" over the
years.

In closing, I will not ask again what the
reader believes occurred in St. Louis in 1949. The case, whether
you believe in possession, demons and exorcisms or not, remains
unsolved. There is simply no way to adequately dismiss every
unusual thing that was reported in this case without just saying
that everyone involved was a liar, drunk or insane. For myself,
I can't say that young Robbie Doe was possessed, or not
possessed, but what I can say is that this is one of the few
cases of alleged "possession" that has left me with many
lingering questions.

The reader, of course, is advised to judge
for himself but as for this author, well, I think there are
certainly more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in
our philosophies!

The full version of the 1949 story
appears in Troy Taylor's Upcoming Book, THE DEVIL CAME TO ST.
LOUIS -- Available Summer 2006!